Something
quite sinister is happening. But you knew that. As
we know all too well, since
the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, everything
changed: the earth somersaulted on its axis, and reality
became inverted. I first broached, somewhat tentatively,
the idea that 9/11 ripped a hole in the space-time
continuum and delivered us into a nightmare universe 
a Bizarro
World where up is down, right is wrong, and conservatives
have morphed into Jacobins
 in a column written last year.
I see that Maureen Dowd has picked
up on this, recently, and the meme is spreading, as evidence
for my thesis picks up steadily, in small ways and large:

But
it's the little things, too, that tend to support the Bizarro
World thesis. Like
this blog entry, taken from an Iraqi blog entitled "Healing
Iraq":

"Unless
there are some extreme measures and punishments against those
responsible it is going to get any better. I'm going to repeat
it again and everyday:
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public trials, public trials, public trials, public trials,
public executions, public executions, public executions, public
executions, public executions, public executions, public executions,
public executions, public executions, public executions, public
executions, public executions, public executions, public executions,
public executions, public executions, public executions, public
executions, public executions, public executions, public executions,
public executions, public executions, public executions, public
executions, public executions, public executions, public executions,
public executions, public executions, public executions, public
executions, public executions,

"Those
militants don't understand any language except the language
of force. Fuck human rights. Those aren't humans anyway. We
desperately NEED to see some heads rolling. Believe it or
not. Theres [sic] going to have to be some bloodshed
for this to work. Bomb the hell out of Tikrit and Al-Awja.
Massacre every last person of Saddam's tribe. Rape his women.
Yeah."

Zeyad
is living proof that Western style liberal democracy will
never take root in Iraq, not in 10,000 years.

The
inversion of everything has, for the most part, aided the
War Party: evil became good, after all. Lately, however, the
Bizarro World effect shows some signs of backfiring on them.
Because it also means that America's allies are going to act
like enemies. This explains why the Queen is adamantly refusing
to take elementary measures to protect the President during
his stay at Buckingham Palace. The Age quotes an anonymous
courtier:

"They
wanted blast and bullet-proofed windows and curtains and some
strengthening to the walls of the President's suite and other
rooms at the Palace where he would be spending time. The President's
security men seem obsessed with the idea of an airborne attack
on the Palace."

Change
the curtains? Heaven forfend!

On
the other hand, this may not be an example of the Bizarro
effect at work: it's about what you might expect from the
Brits, come to think of it. Yet the effect, in this case,
could be more subtle. Why is this courtier surprised
that the President's security is "obsessed" with the possibility
of an airborne attack? Isn't that what got the Pentagon and
3,000 people in and around the World Trade Center? My thesis
stands.

The
Bizarro Effect took hold instantly, in the moments after the
first plane hit the World Trade Center, and has been intensifying
ever since. As time goes on, things will only get worse 
or better, if you're Richard Perle.

The
horror unleashed by 9/11 has yet to fully play itself out.
But what we don't know about that day could fill volumes.
The 9/11 Commission that was constituted only at the insistence
of the families of the victims is still being stonewalled
by the White House: the Commission had to threaten
to subpoena key documents to get even a modicum
of cooperation. More such threats will certainly be in
order.

Penetrating
the mysteries of 9/11 will require more than subpoena power,
however, and before we get to the heart of it no doubt many
volumes of research and analysis will be written and published.
My own modest addition to the genre has just been published.
The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection
is now
available from iUniverse.

NOTES
IN THE MARGIN

I
had originally contracted with Verso Books to write The
Terror Enigma: the manuscript went through a long
editing process and the cover was being designed when book
production was abruptly halted. My editor, who shall remain
nameless, had no explanation, and was clearly mortified.

One
reason, I was informed much later, was that I had no "primary
sources" for my contention that Israel was tracking the 9/11
hijackers and had some inkling of their intentions. As to
what such a source would consist of, in this context, was
not clear. Why doesn't the DEA report on those suspicious Israeli
"art students" qualify as a primary source, one wonders,
especially since it contains some damning admissions by apprehended
Israeli agents in the U.S.?

At
any rate, this derailed plans to release the book on the second
anniversary of 9/11, as originally projected by Verso's publicity
department. But I was undeterred. Clearly, the reasons given
by Verso for scotching publication were completely bogus:
Tariq
Ali, a member of Verso's editorial board, who wrote to
me, sneered that it might make "a good magazine article."
But that hardly seems like a rational argument given the nature
of the story. Given that the The
Terror Enigma opens up the
possibility that America's closest ally had foreknowledge
of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and somehow neglected to tell
us all they knew, Mr. Ali's critique is utterly facile. And
disingenuous, in view of Verso's previous decision not to
include the appendices I had submitted, including the lengthy
DEA report, which would have more than doubled the number
of pages.

I
have stuck with Verso's decision not to append the DEA report,
since it is readily available online  and also searchable.
Anyone who wants to verify my citations, and the conclusions
I draw from them, can easily do so.

I
am very pleased with iUniverse,
a firm that represents the future of book publishing.
The way they do things, there are no books to stock, no warehousing
and no huge upfront printing costs: the reader orders a copy
and thereby wills the book into existence. An elegant demonstration
of consumer supremacy in the cyber-economy and the relation
of markets to natural law. If the consumers don't want it,
it won't even get printed: if they do, then the world will
be awash in copies. It's a giant step forward in the evolution
of book publishing.

Another
great aspect of this publishing innovation is that the story,
as it develops further, can be updated with far less trouble.
Revising a book when new information comes in has always been
a major headache for publishers: the costs, given the constraints
of traditional publishing technology, have always been largely
prohibitive, except in the case of runaway best-sellers. With
the new technology, however, revising and updating a book
is no longer such a major problem. Much remains to be discovered
about the Israeli connection to the events that surrounded
9/11, and as more of the truth is uncovered the old edition
can be added to with relatively little trouble.

In
the meantime, practically everything we know about this recurring
story  which the authorities dismiss as an "urban myth" 
is contained in The
Terror Enigma. The evidence for Israeli foreknowledge
of 9/11, all of it gleaned from "mainstream" sources, is extensive
and fully documented. Where there's this much smoke, there's
bound to be at least some fire  and, on those general principles
alone, the book, I think, deserves to become a best-seller.

Gee,
I sure hope the Bizarro Effect hasn't yet taken hold in the
world of book publishing. I was counting on those royalties
to take my first vacation since my aborted September 10, 2001
trip to the former Yugoslavia.